SEPI Marketing’s Dir. of Business Development Brian McGuinn Reviews MobileRVing.com's Rapid Growth In Today's Culture of Social Media & Mobile Phones
Major changes are on the way at MobileRVing.com, all with the aim of providing a better experience for our readers. The redesigned website, optimized for use on the road, debuted at the beginning of March 2018.
“We are basically recreating our interface,” Brian McGuinn, SEPI Marketing’s director of business development, says. “We’ll merge the MobileRVing website with The Buzz as well as our social media platform MRV Connect. Our aim is to provide the best mobile experience for RV travelers, people who are always on the move.”
The social media platform, MRV Connect, already available in a beta version, is one of the most exciting features of the new design. “It’s a full featured portal for RVers,” McGuinn says. “There’s a journal, so you can catalog your journeys, and a wish list of places you’d like to visit. The news feed lets you share your journey with others and see where other people in your network are traveling.” Other features let you plan your journey, view campgrounds and resorts along your route, leave reviews, send emails to your friends, and find nearby travelers that you may want to meet. Brian stresses that the site’s privacy settings let you decide how much information you want to share.
Mobile RVing’s RV resort and campground search engine, already the world’s largest, continues to grow. “We have listings for more than 22,000 camping destinations in the U.S. and Canada,” Brian says. “In addition, we recently uploaded some 18,000 European destinations, and last month added more than 2,000 boondocking locations available for campers.”
According to McGuinn, MobileRVing.com’s listings differ from other camping websites in the wide variety of properties included. “We include everyone,” he explains, “state parks, private campgrounds, franchised resorts, recreation areas... We want to provide a complete repository of camping information that is updated every single year with the latest information.”
Website visitors will find additional guidance provided by Mobile RVing experts. “Preferred parks are those that are vetted by our staff regularly to ensure they provide a suitable and accommodating experience for campers and RVers, and meet our requirements. We check with the park owners and managers and update their profiles regularly, and we provide photos and videos of the park on the site,” McGuinn says. “Quality properties are ones that we do not personally stay in communication with to update their profile with news and personalized information. So you won’t see the MobileRVing Seal on those properties, nor extensive descriptions.”
A new campground reservation system, launched a few months ago, is already available, and proving a popular option with RVers on the road. “People appreciate the convenience of booking online,” McGuinn says.
Another resource found on the new MobileRVing website is an extensive listing of local RV-related businesses. “In the last year, we’ve added over 8,000 businesses, offering everything from RV repairs and sales to medical services to meals and entertainment, who have uploaded their profiles,” McGuinn says.
The local advertiser listings are an outgrowth of Southeast Publications’ (SEPI) earliest endeavor. “Our claim to fame is our guest guides, sitemaps to individual campgrounds that have ads for local businesses,” he says. “Last year we published 1,600 different guides featuring over 17,000 local advertisers.”
SEPI began publishing the maps, provided free to campgrounds and their guests, in 1984. Founded by Peter Warrick, it remains a family owned business, now under the direction of Warrick’s son, Wally and his wife Kim. The company is headquartered in Plantation, Florida, but maintains a national presence with over 100 contractors who sell ads, create content and help program the website.
In 2012, SEPI entered the digital age with the debut of MobileRVing.com. Since then, the company’s websites have seen a steady increase in visitation. Brian reports that 2016’s 45,000 unique visitors per month grew to 80,000 per month in 2017. The popularity of the company’s Facebook pages has grown as well with an additional 26,000 fans joining the community last year. Visits to the MobileRVing YouTube channel reached new heights, with over 500 hours of viewed content, including 350 profiles of different resorts, drone footage, interviews and more.
The new website employs the latest technology to ensure a smooth online experience for users. “The site is geared to people who browse on their mobile phones,” McGuinn says. “It uses AMPs, accelerated mobile pages, which Google can store and serve up immediately, even in areas with poor cellphone connectivity.”
Users will have access to over 200,000 pages of indexed content, including over 240 blog posts added last year, as well as an ever-growing archive of Buzz articles. According to Brian, MobileRVing’s five bloggers contribute articles on very specific topics of their expertise aimed at making RVing a more enjoyable experience. “We have articles on workamping, DIY articles on how to improve and fix your unit, educational articles about types of RVs, and columns on how to deal with problems like mold or blackwater backups.”
Other new features on the website will allow campgrounds and advertisers to update their information in real time. “They can add images, videos, activities, prices, even short term specials,” says McGuinn. “RVers can stay connected wherever they are.
“We’re in growth mode right now,” he says, “Our industry is projected to grow more than 10 percent this year, and there’s a big push into overseas markets including China. Our aim is to bring all of our years of RV and camping knowledge together in one place, to help our users have the best possible experience when they are out on the road.”
Renee Wright
A graduate of Franconia College in Social Psychology, Renee has worked as Travel Editor for Charlotte Magazine and has written three travel guidebooks for Countryman Press among other writing assignments. She enjoys food and camping.
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MobileRVing.com, which was recently redesigned for a better user experience and caters to the mobile lifestyle, especially RVers full-timing on the road and always looking for quality RV parks or campgrounds to stay at.